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Vintage (and Non-Vintage) Finds - Prints, Puddings, Perfume & More!


I've been a fairly good girl recently and not bought too many pretty useless things! There have however been some bargains I just couldn't resist like this lovely framed print that I picked up at my local Loros shop this morning for only £3.50. It's a really nice size at about 21" tall and the frame is a lovely ruby red wood with a little bit of gilding inside - it's hung right next to the computer and I love it even more each time I look at it. It might even be my favourite of our collection of vintage prints.


This pretty young thing is in nowhere near as good condition as the lady above, but I still really like her. This one is about 35" x 25" so pretty big and I only paid £2 for her including the frame!!!! It is a cropped print of an 18th Century oil painting called 'The Reader' by Jean-HonorĂ© Fragonard. Unfortunately this one hadn't been that well looked after by its previous owner and is quite faded probably due to a long period of exposure to direct sunlight - if you research the painting online you'll see that the colours are actually much stronger on the original. The frame is pretty badly beaten up too but that can be sorted in time; I hung her in the stairwell and enjoy seeing her whenever I go up to bed.


Now another addition to my collectin of printed glassware! This was actually a set of four but I was using one at the time I took this photo. They are in excellent condition with hardly any wear to the gilding and were a bargain at £6 for the set at the Vintage Suitcase fair in Bakewell that I was at with my beauty parlour a few weeks ago.


This was another Vintage Suitcase fair find this time from the fair at the Derbyshire Dome in Buxton. The nice lady running the stall let me have it for £4 and I use it on my pop-up beauty parlour at fairs so people can see how their style is done if they want to try it themselves at home. It's a little worn on the back but the mirror itself is in great condition with only a few marks.


And now two non-vintage buys. I was in need of a new perfume for work so had a look on one of my favourite sites Fragrance Direct. After a good look around I decided to go for YSL Paris Premieres Roses Edition. A 125ml bottle of EDT was only £25.99 and I haven't found a YSL perfume that I don't like yet so crossed my fingers and ordered even though I hadn't smelled it before - or so I thought! When it arrived I gave it a smell and recognised it straight away; it was one that my Mum had bought a while ago! I don't mind this at all as I have a glam Mum with good taste in scents. It's lovely and floral and sweet with a touch of powder behind it - a little old fashioned but just my cup of tea.

The collar clips were a mega cheap eBay purchase from Hong Kong and I mean mega cheap - they were £1.15 with free shipping! I don't know how they do it, but I love these so much; I have an obsession with Art Deco style hand jewellery and although these are new they are a lovely touch to an outfit. They took about a month and a half to arrive, but you can't argue for that price! 



This was a great find completely out of the blue at one of the Guildhall Vintage & Antique Fairs that I worked at a few weeks ago - an amazing antique book on confectionery and desserts. One of my favourite things about it is that there is a list of previous owners pencilled into the front cover, the first one being in 1933! As you can see it isn't in that great condition and I only paid £13 for it, but the colour picture plates are just gorgeous and it's interesting to see that it's trilingual giving instructions in English, French and I think Spanish.


Some of the recipes look amazing, especially these ice cream bombs! I've set myself the challenge of making at least one before the year is up. The book goes into detail about lots of different kinds of dessert, biscuit, pastry and confection even telling you how to carge centrepieces from blocks of ice! 


There are some darling celebration ideas like the Easter bunny cake above. There are also some amazingly intricate sugar work creations for other holidays and a few crazily complex wedding cake towers!


These dessert slices look delicious, I can only imagine the amount of butter in all those cake layers and buttercream!